A day after leaving the “Fast and Furious” franchise, Justin Lin got a curious phone call. Lin, who had directed four of the street racing-themed action movies, was asked by Google to collaborate on a very different kind of film project: one that would be available only on mobile phones, and force him to give up a huge amount of creative control. “I couldn’t have asked for a better challenge or medium,” Lin recalled during an interview this week.

In the coming months I'll be serving as your guide to the dark world of tabletop miniatures gaming. More than that, I'll be trying to tell you what makes the very best ones sing – what about each one makes them unique, and why people spend huge amounts of money and even larger amounts of time assembling and painting little soldiers.

Vivalist's insight:

Shut Up & Sit Down bring their expertise to the miniature gaming world. First installment is on Infinity and it is splendid!

For Her Story developer Sam Barlow, surrendering his story to players was a mental hurdle he had to overcome as a writer. But it seems to have paid off.

Vivalist's insight:

Her Story is a "video" game in which you solve a murder case by accessing video interviews through a database. Each request in the database gives you 5 videos to watch, they are not arranged chronologically so the whole process forces you to figure things out on your own and to be specific with your requests. Deep and immersive, this game desn't insult your intelligence.

And it is very inspiring for future 21st century video projects. Imagine how cool a series like True Detective S1 would have been with such a concept in order to dive deep into the "Four Stages of Rustin Cohle" :)

Here is the buzz article. Delivered by a "journalist" who copy-pasted the press release in exchange of a free ride and (probably) food/drinks during a press event. You know... gotta dump those 1000 words a day.

Jonathan Takiff: "This first-of-a-kind, highly interactive event is part movie, part electronic arcade and Comic-Con gathering. It aims no less than to reshape touring entertainment for the 21st century. The goal is to please a multimedia, seen-it-all audience that craves to live in the moment."

I know exactly how you’re feeling right now. Usability Debt just punched you in the face…and it hurts.

Vivalist's insight:

Lol. I guess a lot of game designers can relate. It's tough to accept that what's thought as being cutting edge design is poor design for the targeted audience.

You feel like the artist that is not understood by the masses, you feel you're right and THEY are wrong... and... you're WRONG, unless the game is just for you and your genius friends in the first place.

As the technology that lets professional drones capture beautiful shots from algorithmically-determined angles trickles down to more reasonably-priced consumer gadgets, it’s not hard to envision a family buying a drone to capture photos and video at gatherings so no one has to be left out by holding the camera.

That’s the market Lily is going after, and it’s building a family-friendly gadget and brand to reach them.

Valve and Bethesda's announcement of a jointly run paid Skyrim mods store has been met by nothing but fury from fans over the past 24 hours. Even modders, whom the idea is supposed to benefit, are coming out against the idea, which they deem detrimental to the entire community.

Vivalist's insight:

Mods have kept a game like Skyrim alive for years after many would have otherwise stopped playing. Bethesda is choosing to look at this like “why are these players not giving us more money?” rather than “wow, this is amazing advertising and community building for our franchise!” Modders usually love the games they mod, which is why they spend so much time on their creations. Changing the equation and turning them into employees is going to dishearten many of them, and attract the wrong sort of crowd.

SO, it did not take long before Steam announced they give up on the paid-mods system

In my repeated experience, any device more than a few years old loses the ability to run the new operating systems.

Programming for Apple devices has, for the 20 years I’ve been doing it, been a continuous hassle. Apple constantly makes the old code obsolete, forcing programmers to relearn and revise everything constantly. Sometimes, these changes lead to better devices and software. Other times, it’s just obnoxiousness with no gain for developers or users. It’s just something you learn to live with, until you give up.

And Apple doesn’t care. Why should they? In 2014, 500 games came out on iTunes a day. A day. I suspect that Apple would be ecstatic if 90 percent of game developers disappeared overnight.

I loved being an iOS developer. I though it was really cool, and quitting made me respect myself less as a developer. [but] sometimes a thing you want to do is too much hassle for the rewards. Part of being in business is recognizing those moments and making ugly choices.

Vivalist's insight:

It might be just one voice, a drop in the ocean, but the man has a point. Microsoft code is still valid 20 years after. Apple's code is not after 20months. It's another kind of planned obsolescence...

... Android / Linux is not a solution either - so Microsoft might have an opportunity to win back some devs' love with Windows 10.

Zig Zag Zoom is aiming to "channel the entropy" of players who have wanted to help causes but maybe were unsure of what they might do. "Seven out of ten young adults identify themselves as social activists but seven out of ten people aren't making an impact. They don't know what to do. Social activism is on the rise, sustainability is a big issue with all these companies right now - we're bringing these trends together with our mobiliz3 platform," says Former Disney Interactive executives Tom Kang

Vivalist's insight:

"It's like an airline frequent flyer program. As you play games, you get impact points and you're able to use those impact points for causes you care about," Kang explained to GamesIndustry.biz during GDC.

The RoboCup was founded in 1997 as a global venue for playful robotic competition, but with a serious undercurrent of highly advanced A.I. and mechanical experimentation. Since then it has blossomed into a major event, featuring multiple leagues and tracks for different types and sizes of robotic athletes

Featuring customisable worlds and an array of models and mini-figs, Lego’s entry into creative gaming aims to corner market in constructive digital play

Vivalist's insight:

and " Lego is making aggressive moves to corner the market in constructive digital play. It has also announced Lego Dimensions, an action adventure title that lets players combine real-world models with on-screen action, in a manner similar to the hugely successful Skylanders and Disney Infinity titles."

Back in 2011, a friend suggested I start a Twitter account. In those days, social media wasn't yet a "thing." Few actors, let alone those of my generation, were active online. I was known primarily from my supporting role on a television and film franchise that had first aired more than 40 years earlier, and had abstract future plans to star in a musical. Why would anyone care what I had to say? Twitter seemed silly to me, but, on a lark, I signed up.

Vivalist's insight:

This guy is so cool. Here are his words of wisdom splattered all over a double rainbow across all the sky of social media.

Remember a few weeks back, when we learned that Google’s artificial neural network was having creepy daydreams, turning buildings into acid trips and landscapes into Magic Eye pictures? Well, prepare to never sleep again, because last week, Google made its “inceptionism” algorithm available to the public, and the nightmarish images are cropping up everywhere.

As a microcosm of human activity, the game has been studied by academics interested in creating political models, and by economists interested in testing financial ones. In a universe where every bullet, trade, offer of friendship and betrayal can be tracked and its impact logged and measured, Eve offers a new way to understand our species and the social systems of our world.

Vivalist's insight:

The core experience of Eve's open world structure and the mechanims powering it could be exported in an infinite of other settings. Sci-fi might be the drive that get some interested, but earth would benefit from all the energy engaged to creating these socio-economico-political experiments.

Alex Gianturco [a] retired DC attorney in real life, in Eve Online, [is] a “ruthless space dictator.” [who] helped start wars, spied on enemies, orchestrated espionage missions and made a name for himself by leading the biggest and baddest group of players in the game.” As these individual actions ripple throughout Eve’s world, they sometimes result in thesprawling, expensive space battles that even people who have never played the game often hear about.

Torfi Frans Olafsson [...] is responsible for taking moments like these and building off of them. In practice, this means creating new games, and possibly a TV series [that] would take players’ stories and retell them from the ground up. “[W]e want to tell the full story of this universe, what it’s like on the streets: what is it like to live on a desert colony planet in the middle of nowhere,” Olafsson explained.

Vivalist's insight:

Create an open world allowing for emergent gameplays, let people populate and create their own stories then gather all the drama data and produce new content with it. That's the 21st century approach to transmedia - right there.

At the meeting about HoloLens, Mr. Nadella told the team how he wanted the project to proceed. It was not going to be organized like Xbox, the company’s video game system, which developed as a semiautonomous republic. He wanted the group to be fully integrated into Microsoft.

That meant collaborating with people developing Skype, the company’s online voice and videoconferencing service, as well as the Windows and video games teams.

Vivalist's insight:

“You’re not going to ship this without making it work,” Mr. Nadella responded at the time. “One of the advantages of being C.E.O. is you say things like that and people rise to the occasion,” he said.

Looks like Microsoft's new CEO is getting things done, renovating this arrogant giant company into what it should always should have been.

Loads of great stuff is developed by Microsoft Research but poor management of innovation prevented the company to fully leverage on it in the past. HoloLens could be the game changer.

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